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Daily Inspiration Quote by James Mackintosh

"Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions"

About this Quote

Mackintosh lands a tidy blow against the era's favorite pastime: mistaking ideas for character. Coming from a judge steeped in Enlightenment argument and post-Revolution nervousness, the line reads like courtroom wisdom distilled into social critique. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, "opinions" were not casual takes; they were political flags. To hold the wrong one could get you branded a traitor, an infidel, a Jacobin, a reactionary. Mackintosh, who famously moved from youthful enthusiasm for the French Revolution to a chastened liberalism, knew how quickly the public turns intellectual allegiance into moral sentencing.

The intent is corrective: your stance on a question is an unreliable proxy for your decency. People with excellent principles can behave cruelly; people with dubious theories can still act kindly, loyally, even bravely. As a judge, he would have seen this mismatch daily, where motive, circumstance, temperament, and chance scramble any neat alignment between belief and behavior. The subtext is also a warning to the self-righteous: the pleasure of holding the "right" opinion can masquerade as virtue, while the "wrong" opinion becomes an easy excuse to dehumanize.

What makes the sentence work is its calibrated symmetry - "never so good or so bad" - refusing both saint-making and demon-making. It's not relativism; it's humility with teeth. Mackintosh is asking for a more accurate moral accounting: judge people by what they do, not by the ideological costumes they wear to the party.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
Source
Later attribution: The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Honourable Sir James... (Sir James Mackintosh, 1851) modern compilationID: fW1sJsaMfnwC
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
Complete in One Volume Sir James Mackintosh Robert James Mackintosh. The later moralists who adopt the prin ... Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions . All that can be with reason apprehended is , that these last may ...
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Mackintosh, James. (2026, March 13). Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/men-are-never-so-good-or-so-bad-as-their-opinions-133030/

Chicago Style
Mackintosh, James. "Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions." FixQuotes. March 13, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/men-are-never-so-good-or-so-bad-as-their-opinions-133030/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions." FixQuotes, 13 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/men-are-never-so-good-or-so-bad-as-their-opinions-133030/. Accessed 13 Mar. 2026.

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Men Are Never So Good or Bad as Their Opinions
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About the Author

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James Mackintosh (October 24, 1765 - May 30, 1832) was a Judge from Scotland.

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